PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Kaushik Mitra

Kaushik Mitra is a computational imaging researcher at IIT Madras whose lab co-designs camera optics with reconstruction and deep learning algorithms. He studied at the University of Calcutta and the Indian Institute of Science, worked at Samsung India, earned a Ph.D. at the University of Maryland in 2011, and spent 2011 to 2014 as a postdoctoral research associate with Ashok Veeraraghavan at Rice University. At IIT Madras since 2015, he coauthored FlatNet for lensless cameras in 2020, a real-time dark-image restoration network at CVPR 2021, and the CADS coded-aperture dual-pixel system in 2024. Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship awards went to his students in 2016, 2017, 2020 and 2021, and he received a QIF Faculty Award in 2024. He is an associate professor of electrical engineering at IIT Madras and principal investigator of its Computational Imaging Lab.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 2001–2011

    Degrees from Calcutta to Maryland

    He earns a B.Tech. in radiophysics and electronics from the University of Calcutta in 2001 and an M.E. in electrical communication engineering from the Indian Institute of Science in 2003. Samsung India Software Operations in Bangalore employs him as a senior software engineer from 2003 to 2004. A Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, follows in 2011, with research on statistical models and optimization algorithms for high-dimensional computer vision problems.

  2. 2011–2014

    Postdoc at Rice University

    From 2011 to 2014, he is a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University, working with Ashok Veeraraghavan on a framework for analyzing computational imaging systems. A 2013 paper with Oliver Cossairt and Veeraraghavan, "A Framework for the Analysis of Computational Imaging Systems with Practical Applications", models signal priors with a Gaussian mixture model to measure the performance of imaging techniques.

  3. 2015–2022

    Assistant professor at IIT Madras

    In 2015, he joins the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras as an assistant professor, a rank he holds until October 2022. Students from his lab win the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship India award in 2016, 2017, 2020 and 2021, and he is their faculty mentor each time.

  4. 2020

    FlatNet for lensless cameras

    FlatNet, coauthored in 2020 with Salman S. Khan, Varun Sundar, Vivek Boominathan and Ashok Veeraraghavan, reconstructs photorealistic images from mask-based lensless cameras with a non-iterative deep learning approach and is accepted to IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. IIT Madras and Rice University develop the algorithm together for lensless, miniature cameras aimed at augmented reality, virtual reality, security, smart wearables and robotics.

  5. 2021

    Restoring dark images in real time

    In the CVPR 2021 proceedings, he and Mohit Lamba present a deep learning architecture for restoring extremely dark single images. The model is lightweight and fast, and its restorations are perceptually at par with state-of-the-art computationally intense models.

  6. 2024

    Coded aperture dual-pixel imaging

    A 2024 CVPR paper with Bhargav Ghanekar, Ashok Veeraraghavan and others introduces CADS, Coded Aperture Dual-Pixel Sensing, which places a coded aperture in the lens in front of a dual-pixel sensor and learns the coded pattern and the reconstruction algorithm together. CADS improves all-in-focus estimates by more than 1.5 dB PSNR and depth estimation quality by 5-6% over naive dual-pixel sensing, and the authors build prototypes for DSLR photography, an endoscope and a dermoscope.

  7. 2024

    A Qualcomm faculty award

    He receives a QIF Faculty Award from Qualcomm's Innovation Fellowship program in 2024.

  8. Since 2022

    Associate professor at IIT Madras

    He becomes an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Madras in November 2022 and leads the Computational Imaging Lab as principal investigator. The lab co-designs camera optics with reconstruction and deep learning algorithms, and its work covers lensless imaging, low-light photography, neural rendering and computational photography.

Career

  1. Since 2015IIT MadrasAssistant Professor, Associate Professor
  2. 2011–2014Rice UniversityPostdoctoral Research Associate
  3. 2003–2004Samsung India Software OperationsSenior Software Engineer

Education

  1. 2011University of MarylandPhD
  2. 2003Indian Institute of ScienceM.E. in electrical communication engineering
  3. 2001University of CalcuttaB.Tech. in radiophysics and electronics

From the biography.

  1. 23% of people shaping AI who left a university for a company later returned to a universityIncludes Kaushik Mitra. We estimate that 468 of the 2,011 people shaping AI who left a university for a company (23%) later returned to a university after a median of 5 years, and 163 of 829 (20%) made the reverse round trip.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 48% of people shaping AIIncludes IIT Madras. We estimate where the people shaping AI work today, how universities, companies and research institutes split across countries, and how country shares have changed since the 1960s.
  3. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes IIT Madras. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  4. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes IIT Madras. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Kaushik Mitra yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Dr. Kaushik Mitra - Academic Profile | IIT Madras ee.iitm.ac.in. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Dr. Kaushik Mitra - EE, IITM ee.iitm.ac.in. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. A Framework for the Analysis of Computational Imaging Systems with Practical Applications arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. ICAPR 2015: Invited Speakers isical.ac.in. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. FlatNet: Towards Photorealistic Scene Reconstruction from Lensless Measurements arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. IIT Madras Develops Algorithm For Lensless, Miniature Cameras acr.iitm.ac.in. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Restoring Extremely Dark Images in Real Time openaccess.thecvf.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Passive Snapshot Coded Aperture Dual-Pixel RGB-D Imaging arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Computational Imaging Lab – IIT Madras ee.iitm.ac.in. Checked 21 October 2026.